ViPNet Coordinator

Any computer with ViPNet Coordinator installed has a central communication function in the ViPNet network.

One of its most important purposes is acting as an IP addresses server. This means, that each client connecting to a coordinator, submits its IP address to the coordinator and receives the addresses of other network nodes online at the time. When a coordinator receives information about other clients from other coordinators, it will broadcast that information to clients connected to it. If a coordinator does not receive information from a client within six minutes, it will consider the client offline and will broadcast that information to other connected network nodes.

After clients receive information about each other from their coordinators, they start communicating directly with each other. This rule is applied to all ViPNet online services and is not applied to ViPNet offline services such as Business Mail and File Exchange. All data and system packets of these services are routed through the coordinator. This results in the coordinator also acting as a mail server. An incoming data or system packet will be routed by the coordinator according to existing routing tables.

Another function of ViPNet Coordinator is the ViPNet firewall function for encrypted connections. This allows:

ViPNet clients (they work on the LAN through a coordinator) to function using one IP address
the tunneling of traffic from insecure computers or computers on the periphery of the LAN to other VPN objects. (The coordinator can act as a tunnel server only if there is no need to secure the communication or provide user authentication inside a LAN.)
the re-routing of encrypted traffic from ViPNet clients to the IP address of their own coordinator (with substitution of MAC address) and firewalls of other types.

ViPNet Coordinator can also act in the capacity of a classic firewall that applies specified rules of filtration and a security policy for unsecured traffic.

If a client works through a coordinator that is carrying out the substitution of addresses (NAT) for encrypted traffic, all encrypted traffic is automatically routed through that coordinator. The coordinator will not handle non-encrypted traffic; this traffic will be treated according to the configuration of the underlying operating system of the client and routing rules specified in LAN for open traffic.

If there are two or more network adapters set up on a coordinator, you can apply individual filtering rules to each adapter. This way, the coordinator can be used to separate a network into several segments.

ViPNet Coordinator can be installed on a typical workstation but we recommend installing it on servers (for example, 'stand alone' or SMTP, web, file, database) where administrator access rights are required. If you use one of these server types, you don't need to install coordinator on a separate computer. This allows you to use your existing capital outlay to configure your ViPNet network.

The main window of ViPNet Coordinator software is ViPNet Coordinator [Monitor]. From this window you can configure and manage the working coordinator.